STREAT Cafe joins QVM’s Purpose Precinct

STREAT Cafe is the latest addition to Queen Victoria Market’s (QVM) Purpose Precinct, showcasing circular products from the Moving Feast kitchen and minimising waste at the market.

The new cafe location at the market has fulfilled a long-held vision of STREAT’s founder Rebecca Scott to be a part of the vibrant QVM community, with the Purpose Precinct providing a dedicated space for consumers to engage in ethical shopping within a “one-stop-shop” social enterprise hub.

“Rebecca is a real trailblazer in the social enterprise space. She’s been really keen to engage in or be a part of the market for a number of years,” Purpose Precinct general manager Llawela Forrest said.

“She could see the vision of having an impact precinct at QVM, it just makes a lot of sense. It’s in the heart of Melbourne, and it has a whole range of different customers coming through from international students, interstate tourists, and locals.”

Central to STREAT’s broader ethos, the new cafe works closely with the Moving Feast test kitchen, located just a few doors away, to innovate and test new product ideas using unsold and overripe produce from QVM stallholders.

While QVM already has a successful food waste program where products are sent to a composting facility, the Moving Feast kitchen aims to intervene earlier in the waste cycle.

One of the inaugural products hitting the shelves from the Moving Feast kitchen, crafted by STREAT’s eco-chef Chris Locke, is a vegan XO sauce made from 300 kilograms of unsold sweet potatoes, preventing them from being composted.

“The idea is that we’re taking food waste from fruit and veg vendors at QVM that are perfectly fine to eat but consumers are not going to purchase – like bananas that might be spotty or sweet potatoes that are a bit wrinkly – and creating products that are sold here,” Ms Forrest told CBD News. 

“It’s also a space that we’re inviting other social enterprises into, who want to explore the development of food products. At the moment we’ve got Cultivating Community, and they’re working with different cohorts to use food as a mechanism to support their economic futures,” Ms Forrest said.

Additionally, STREAT’s QVM location will serve as a training site for youth facing employment barriers, offering programs in both hospitality and horticulture.

“That was always the goal of this precinct, is to have this be a training site for STREAT to continue their amazing programs. It’s a unique asset to QVM, there’s nothing quite like that here,” Ms Forrest said.

Marketgoers can now enjoy specialty coffee from STREAT, browse Moving Feast’s latest pantry products, and explore the diverse offerings of the Purpose Precinct in one convenient location.

“We’ve now got 50 different social enterprises installed, and we’re hoping to get to at least 80 by the end of the year. If you’re someone that wants to be shopping more ethically and more consciously, then you just need to come here,” Ms Forrest said.

“The best way to support social enterprise is to buy from social enterprise. The great thing that we have here is that people can just come to one place now, it’s a one-stop-shop – that was a whole intention of how we created it.” •